Battlefield V is completely insufferable.

The amazingly lazy balance decisions (balancing in a vacuum, not for the entire game).
The chaotic COD game play.
The PR stunts and lack of transparency to the community.
The half truths and lies in marketing.
The protection of cheaters and shaming of legitimate customers.
The way customers are played as fools.
The lack of commitment in understanding your customer/player base.
Has made Battlefield V completely insufferable.

I have been trying to understand why I keep playing this game, when EVERY. SINGLE. MATCH is nothing but pure frustration.

Then it dawned on me. I hate the game play and I dont use hate lightly, but I am hooked on working assignments and leveling, good job on you using classical psychological hooks. However there is no fun in the process, the only fun is the unlock, the reward. But everything leading to that reward is based in frustration.

I think the art in this game is amazing, the music is top notch, I like the clean UI (you could use a bit more drop shadow on some in game text), I like the variety of guns, enjoy the outfits and ability to tailor your characters but actual in game play is detestable, its an embarrassment to the Battlefield franchise.

You are not going to retain your core customer base if the game is left in this state, and I seriously doubt you will grow a new customer base to fill the old ones shoes.

I left Bad Company 2 because of cheaters on PC and I have not played an EA/DICE game until BFV. Sadly for you, most likely my last (I did not even purchase BFV, it came with an RTX 2080).

You had a chance to create some customers, or restore faith in old ones. You did neither.

This game fails, you fail. Get your act together or your studio will close. Investors care nothing about you or me, only money and right now BFV is not raking in the customers and its causing what few you do have to leave.

That being said. I am going to get back in game and try to prove myself wrong, prove my assertions incorrect, prove that my HATE for your company is unfounded. But when I find that I am not incorrect, that my assertions are true and that my hate is well founded because of terrible game play and cheaters galore. I will leave, I will take my wallet and my family with me and none of us will ever touch another game that has EA written on it, EVER AGAIN.

It saddens me. EA was my favorite game company. Back then I did not know the difference between a publisher and a game studio, I just knew when I saw the old three lettered EA logo that I was in for a treat. Wasteland by Interplay and published by you was my favorite game growing up. I loved Bards Tale, Populous, Ultima, and Wing Commander. Sim City by Maxis was also super fun (although I did not like 3000). Now, when I see your logo my feelings are 180 from those feelings as a child. I feel betrayed, disgusted...let down.

My sympathies OP, I agree with mostly everything you say. yes I could tell a mile away back when the first alpha footage appeared that game balance was going to be horrendous. In fact even the TTD issues were visible and I posted about it back then. In the end, I knew this game would be bad and I didn't buy it.

I recommend you just move on to something you enjoy more. Try out some other games or other hobbies a bit more, and you'll soon find that the addictiveness of the rewards will quickly fade away. It's terrible how many games are deeply unfun but just dangle the promise that it will become fun after the next unlock. Do you ever get that kinda empty feeling after finishing the grind for the unlock?

Sadly it's also true that there isn't much point in posting all that much about it. In fact, as you can tell from the way others react, it is more likely to make things worse because they'll try to make you feel bad for it. It's kinda sick, which is also why I've not posted here essentially since the minute I decided to drop Bf as a franchise. I guess I'm breaking that silence just as once off right now.

I hear you, OP, you are not alone. I just lost more than a dozen games in a row; they always know where am I, despite lack of flares & supposedly there is no cheating on Xb1.

Yes, I also read some of BF Skinner’s research about how intermittant positive reinforcement is more effective than constant consistent rewards. That’s how casinos stay in the black, by exploiting human psychology. Luckily, I don’t have OCD and know when to abandon a lost cause.

I’m still soldiering on to get my $40 worth, but not re-upping again. I’ll give Dice credit, as I think some of their developers really do care about providing the best product, however I have no confidence in their Big Brother. It should be obvious by now, EA only cares about $€£¥ and milking games as cash cows. I know, I heard the rumors & watched the YT videos, went in with eyes open, but gave them another chance to prove they had reformed. Alas, to no avail.

If I keep just 1 New Year’s resolution, it’s to buy no more games from them. May this be my last Battlefield…

You mentioned a lot of things. Luckily...you don’t know aggravations of the infinite black loading screen after EVERY single game. Having to close application and restart after EVERY single game just to get into another game.
Patches have come and gone and still no fix. Not even an acknowledgement...and that would go a long way for me, just something from them.
So with no acknowledgment It may be there is no fix.

Though I don’t agree with everything the OP list, the one about playing customers for fools I can relate to.

I’m not conspiratorial, believing Dice cut prices just to annoy me. I think they were desperate, plain and simple. But the result is the same; I’ll never pre-order a BF game again, nor buy anything but the base game. Never.

If anything, combine it with buggy releases, and I’ll might even wait a few weeks post release, and see. In a 24 month game cycle, what is 14 days anyway.

Well that’s ok and acceptable if it’s purely for the sake of dislike. Read reviews of any product and you will find people not happy for this or that. Negative people in every aspect of life.
For me this game was sold broken. I’m out $180 so far for it. $80 of it is on my part I guess because I thought I could fix the infinite loading screen by going with a portable external SSD card and loading in faster. Didn’t work.
I don’t have a problem with people defending the game. I happen to like the games.

I also get really frustrated with the game at times even though I like the core gameplay mechanics, so I can imagine how bad it can be for you. Seems to me that you have an addictive personality. If it's the progression and leveling up in games that gets you hooked, I'd imagine there are plenty of other games that won't make you so miserable. I get that there isn't anything else quite like Battlefield, and really wanting to like it... but why put yourself through hundreds of hours of grief?

I too agree with the OP concerning BFV. For the most part, the maps are boring and lazy, not balanced at all. Tons of bugs, full of cheaters that continue to ruin the game and DICE it seems continues to ignore its base veteran community and instead listen to the 12 year old Reddit community for their balance and nerfs/buffs.

You mentioned a lot of things. Luckily...you don’t know aggravations of the infinite black loading screen after EVERY single game. Having to close application and restart after EVERY single game just to get into another game.
Patches have come and gone and still no fix. Not even an acknowledgement...and that would go a long way for me, just something from them.
So with no acknowledgment It may be there is no fix.

I have had the black screen, but my GF gets it much more often than I do. Because we play together, this means I leave the game we we're in and wait till she restarts. So while it does not always affect me directly, it has impacted my time in game.

I can sympathize with you. It's extremely frustrating, especially in a game where all stats are recorded. When you die or lose to factors outside of your control, the community uses those stats as indicators of personal skill to browbeat you when you raise a point of concern, even though those stats to not cover every metric of gameplay or value to the team.

Now this happens. I try to change squads and I get kicked from game. Its almost as if EA DICE WANTS me to quit.

i feel your pain, the sad part is there are 3 variations of their horrible coding on display. All of which seems to be a non issue to anyone not effected by it, or they just call you a cryhard. I'll make a new post after update, but wont change.

Black loading screens, stuck loading while a picture of the next map is on screen, I just had the social tab from the pause menu pop up on my screen that didn't go away until I hit the pause button 4 or 5 times.

Any explanation on how people using the same weapon as me is killing me in 1 shot? I never hear more than one bullet and it always takes anywhere from 90 to 100 of my health, what chance do I have?

The invisible prone, I'm sorry, I don't have the patience to wait like some of those people do.

I like the game, but revert night I play, I can never string together any win streaks. Win a game, lose 3. Win 2 in a row? Oh yeah, it feels like something behind the scenes will make me lose 4 because I can't seem to be on good teams all the time.

Black loading screens, stuck loading while a picture of the next map is on screen, I just had the social tab from the pause menu pop up on my screen that didn't go away until I hit the pause button 4 or 5 times.

Any explanation on how people using the same weapon as me is killing me in 1 shot? I never hear more than one bullet and it always takes anywhere from 90 to 100 of my health, what chance do I have?

The invisible prone, I'm sorry, I don't have the patience to wait like some of those people do.

I like the game, but revert night I play, I can never string together any win streaks. Win a game, lose 3. Win 2 in a row? Oh yeah, it feels like something behind the scenes will make me lose 4 because I can't seem to be on good teams all the time.

agreed, i've put more into GTA and ESO in the last week than BF 5. But I will frequent the forums to stay up to date

Black loading screens, stuck loading while a picture of the next map is on screen, I just had the social tab from the pause menu pop up on my screen that didn't go away until I hit the pause button 4 or 5 times.

Any explanation on how people using the same weapon as me is killing me in 1 shot? I never hear more than one bullet and it always takes anywhere from 90 to 100 of my health, what chance do I have?

The invisible prone, I'm sorry, I don't have the patience to wait like some of those people do.

I like the game, but revert night I play, I can never string together any win streaks. Win a game, lose 3. Win 2 in a row? Oh yeah, it feels like something behind the scenes will make me lose 4 because I can't seem to be on good teams all the time.

The black screen and social tab thing are bugs that need to be fixed. For me (on ps4) interestingly the black screen thing started up after that last patch they released but then went away after only happening twice. So idk what that was about but luckily I haven't had to deal with it much.

What exactly is the invisible prone issue? Just not seeing people that are prone? You said you don't have the patience to wait but BF (and especially BFV) is a game that rewards players that check their angles as they proceed throughout the map.

It's kind of a harder to master playstyle than previous games: you gotta be super cautious of people hiding etc and also pretty quick with your twitch skills because of the relatively fast TTK.

The TTD issue on PS4 hasn't been so bad compared to how it was at launch. Sometimes you feel like you're dying from one bullet but multiple people could be firing at you at the same time (which happens all the time in the BF series).